Billy & Mandy was a spin-off of Grim & Evil, along with Evil Con Carne. The show ran from June 13, 2003, to November 9, 2007, but a spin-off film titled Underfist: Halloween Bash aired on October 12, 2008. In addition to the episodes, three movies, two special episodes, and nineteen shorts were made, with 3 award wins for the series as a whole. Billy & Mandy has also been made into a video game as well as various licensed merchandise.

Contents

The series is centered around the exploits of two young children—the optimistic, dim-witted, and kindhearted Billy, and the dark, ill-tempered, sinister, and very intelligent Mandy. After cheating at a limbo match against the Grim Reaper (out of retaliation for putting the limbo rod too low for them to go under), he is enslaved in a perpetual, unwanted friendship with the children, who use his magical abilities and supernatural powers to venture into supernatural locations or environments, such as the underworld, inhabited by an assortment of grotesque monstrous beasts.

The pair also may use Grim's enormously strong supernatural abilities or ties with a number of beastly characters to achieve goals or desires for themselves with grotesque, altered, or twisted end results. Famed fictional monsters including Dracula, the Wolfman, and the bogeyman are also comically depicted in the series, which also includes the characters of the nerdy, awkward Irwin and the snobby, stuck-up, spoiled Mindy.

The show lacks continuity for the most part, as many episodes end with characters killed, exiled, or stuck in a situation. Characters sometimes display an awareness of some events from previous episodes, but there are no clear character arcs or coherent plot lines tying the show together for the most part.

The show's main characters. From left to right: Billy, Mandy and Grim.

The Grim Reaper ("Grim") (voiced by Greg Eagles) is a skeleton Reaper with a Jamaican accent, who carries a scythe and wears a black hooded cloak. After losing a game of limbo to Billy and Mandy, Grim is forced to be their best friend forever.[2] Though Billy is friendly and kind towards him, Mandy treats him coldly and dominantly, and this angers and irritates him to the point where he fantasizes about killing them. However, there have been instances that show that he does care for them, while also finding them obnoxious.[3]

Billy (voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz) is known for being slow with a low IQ and causes the most trouble for the three as a result. Billy is often kind to Grim, although he is seen by Mandy as more of a servant than an actual friend. His biggest fears are clowns and Jeff the spider and often uses tangelos to ward them off. Overall Billy has a friendly personality, but is prone to fits of anger that even Mandy seems to fear.[3][4]

Mandy (voiced by Grey DeLisle) is a cynical and arrogant girl who, unlike Billy, is smart and loves absolute power, order, chaos, and control, which is something she uses to make Grim her obedient servant and slave. Billy and Mandy are best friends, although sometimes it is hard to tell. She almost never smiles, and denies it when she actually does. Her parents are also scared of her. Mandy usually gets what she wants and she does not hesitate to speak her mind.[3][5] Despite her usually cold, dominant, and pompous demeanor she has from time to time been helpful and shown some general concern to both Grim and Billy.

Billy and Mandy started out as a short made by Maxwell Atoms during school. In the short, Billy was trying to drill his head to free the evils from within. The short has never been shown publicly.[6] The show's existence is the result of a viewer poll event by way of telephone and the Internet called Cartoon Network's Big Pick which was held from June 16 to August 25, 2000.[7] The three final choices were The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Whatever Happened to Robot Jones? and Longhair and Doubledome.[7] Out of the three, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy attained the most votes with 57%; Robot Jones came in second place at 23% while Longhair and Doubledome received 20% of the vote.[7][8] The first season began airing on Cartoon Network on August 24, 2001.

Originally part of Grim & Evil, Billy & Mandy served as the main show. In each episode, an Evil Con Carne short was put between two Grim shorts.[7] On occasion, it was the other way around, with two Evil shorts and one Grim short. On June 13, 2003, the network separated the two and gave each their own full-length program. The short-lived Evil Con Carne show was cancelled once the already-produced season had aired. Some characters from Evil Con Carne occasionally appeared on The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. General Skarr would become a permanent recurring character by moving next door to Billy. And in one episode Major Doctor, Hector, Bozkov and Stomach tried convincing Skarr into coming back to the team but once he finally did go back his plans were foiled by Billy.

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy became one of Cartoon Network's top rated series. Commonsense media gave the show a 3/5 star rating and stated that it has "Goofy punchlines and obscure cultural references" and recommends the viewer age be at least 8 years old.[9] The series has won one Annie Award, two Emmy Awards and including those three wins, has been nominated a total of nine times for various awards.

Three TV movies were made for the series. The first one was called Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure and was released on DVD in April, 2007.[16] Commonsense media gave the movie 2/5 stars and is meant for kids over the age of 8 calling it "Undeniably gross and just as undeniably funny".[17] DVDverdict.com gave the movie a good review as well.[18]

A second movie, Wrath of the Spider Queen was also released in 2007. It was based on a spider queen from Grim's distant past, who tries to take revenge on Grim, because she was meant to be the reaper. Meanwhile, keeping up with the spider theme, Billy learns to love his spider son Jeff.[19]

On October 12, 2008, a third and final spin-off movie titled Underfist: Halloween Bash, premiered. The movie's primary focus is on Irwin, Jeff the Spider, Hoss Delgado, General Skarr, and Fred Fredburger accidentally coming together to defeat an invasion of chocolate bar monsters, led by an evil marshmallow bunny, on Halloween night. Billy, Mandy and Grim Reaper always go in other Cartoon Network shows for charity.[20]

A video game inspired by the series based on the movie Billy & Mandy was developed by Midway Games, and released on October 2, 2006,[27] and is a 3D fighting game inspired by the show based on the movie. The video game received fair to good reviews: GameSpot gave it a 6.6/10 by Greg Mueller, he goes on to say that while it is fun for the "first few hours" and has "Fast-paced gameplay" the game action "gets old quickly" and has a very short story mode.[28]IGN gave the game a good score of 7.2/10 highlighting its presentation and appeal.[29]Metacritic gave the game a rating of 61/100 based on 10 critic reviews.[30]